Perhaps some of you remember BART officer Johannes Mehserle who claimed that on New Year’s day 2009 he was grabbing for his taser but instead shot Oscar Grant with his gun while Mr. Grant was lying face down on the floor of the Fruitvale BART station after he and several others had been detained in the aftermath of an alleged fight. Here’s a video of the incident. WARNING: The scenes displayed may be too graphic for some to watch:
At his trial in Los Angeles (where the case had been moved upon request by Mehserle’s attorneys) a jury found on Thursday the Mehrsele was guilty of the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter and not murder, apparently believing Mehserle’s testimony that he mistakenly grabbed his pistol rather than his taser when he shot Mr. Grant in the back, killing him:
A jury found former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle guilty Thursday of involuntary manslaughter, concluding that he did not intend to kill train rider Oscar Grant when he shot him in the back on New Year’s Day 2009 but acted so recklessly that he showed a disregard for Grant’s life.
The verdict was an all-but-unprecedented instance of a police officer being convicted for an on-duty shooting. But it deeply disappointed Grant’s relatives, who said the video-recorded shooting was a murder and that Mehserle deserved a sentence years longer than the one he is likely to receive.
“My son was murdered,” said Wanda Johnson, Grant’s mother, outside the downtown Los Angeles courthouse where the trial was moved to escape heavy publicity in the Bay Area. “He was murdered and the law has not held the officer accountable.” […]
John Burris, an Oakland attorney representing Grant’s family, decried “a true compromise verdict.”
“The system is rarely fair when a police officer shoots an African American male,” Burris said. “No true justice has been given.” Grant was African American and Mehserle is white.
Grant’s uncle, Cephus “Bobby” Johnson, said “we knew from the beginning that we were at war with the system. … We have been slapped in the face by this system that has denied us true justice.”
Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, speaking at a news conference in Oakland, said she was disappointed and frustrated by the verdict.
“We believe Johannes Mehserle was guilty of the crime of murder,” she said. “We presented the case that way, we presented the evidence that way, and the jury found otherwise.” […]
Video footage played repeatedly in court showed that as Mehserle raised his gun, Pirone had his left knee on Grant’s neck. Pirone’s left hand was pressing Grant’s head into the platform, and Pirone’s right hand was holding Grant’s right arm – the same one Mehserle said he had struggled with – behind his back.
Considering the location of the trial I am not surprised. The judge in the case, Judge Robert Perry, had previously ruled that Mehserle could not be convicted of first degree murder, and at best could only be convicted only second degree murder charges. This was extraordinary in itself, considering that premeditation does not require proof of extended time to form that intent. Usually this is a question left for the jury as fact finder to decide, and the Judge’s decision to take that decision from them is rare:
(cont.)
Perry said there wasn’t enough evidence to justify a conviction for first-degree murder.
“The shooting occurred in a manner absent of premeditation to support first-degree murder,” Perry said during a hearing without the jury present. […]
Second-degree murder is defined as an intentional killing that isn’t premeditated or planned, or a killing caused by dangerous conduct and a defendant’s lack of concern for human life.
Perry said a jury should sort out to what degree, if any, Mehserle should be held accountable. The judge conceded, however, that jurors might be confused by the choices.
At the trial, the defense argued primarily that Mehserle was not to blame for the killing because he had been poorly trained by BART officials in the proper use of his taser. The prosecution argued that Mehserle had no reason not to know where his taser was located since in the minutes prior to the shooting, he had drawn and reholstered his taser twice and aimed it at Grant and the other persons who was detained.
Stein pounced on another reason Mehserle should have known where his Taser was: The officer had been on the train platform for less than 2 1/2 minutes before the shooting. And in that brief period of time, Mehserle had already pulled out and reholstered his Taser two times as a warning to Grant and his friends.
The defense also cast aspersions on Grant’s character, claiming he was a parolee and that he had been previously tased by a police officer in a separate traffic stop incident in 2006.
At trial witnesses testified that Mehserle’s fellow police officer involved in the incident used excessive force and taunted Grant with racist slurs just prior to the shooting. This point was repeated by Prosecuting attorney Stein in his closing argument:
Stein said that Pirone was “out of control, he was unhinged,” uttering the racist slurs, “Bitch-ass nigger, right? Bitch-ass nigger, right?” at Grant moments before Mehserle shot him. Stein said the two cops were “acting in tandem as police officers do.”
Oscar Grant’s uncle was frustrated that a previous incident of Mehserle’s violent beating of a different African American male was not permitted to be recounted at trial:
Grant’s uncle, Cephus Johnson, spoke to the media at lunchtime breaks throughout the trial. He told the press that court rules prohibited the prosecution from being able to introduce into evidence previous attacks by Mehserle, including the beating of an African American male. “The system is to blame, the system denied us the right to produce evidence,” he said.
Indeed, in California evidence of prior bad acts bad acts by a defendant may be admitted in the following instances:
(b) Nothing in this section prohibits the admission of evidence that a person committed a crime, civil wrong, or other act when relevant to prove some fact (such as motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, absence of mistake or accident …
c) Nothing in this section affects the admissibility of evidence offered to support or attack the credibility of a witness.
First evidence of Mehserle’s prior beating of an African American male would go to the question of intent, as it would show that Mehserle had previously demonstrated a propensity for violence when dealing with African Americans. Second, witness testified as follows regarding the conduct of the police and Grant at the trial:
The testimony also came from witnesses who said most BART police officers on the Fruitvale platform early Jan. 1, 2009, were using excessive force against Grant and his friends. They all also said that Grant and his friends never resisted arrest or tried to strike the officers.
Second, Mersehle claimed he thought he saw Grant reaching for a gun. However, in his statement on the stand he admitted that he had not followed proper police protocol in circumstances where a suspect in custody is believed to be reaching for a weapon:
As he reached for Grant’s arm, Mehserle said, Grant tensed up and refused to move his arm behind his back. Mehserle said he thought Grant might have been reaching for a gun when he saw Grant move his right hand into his right front pocket.
“I remember the digging motion,” Mehserle said. “It was like he was looking for something in his pocket.”
Mehserle said he then yanked on Grant’s right arm harder, remembering that the strength he used forced Grant’s entire body to move.
“I was pulling as hard as I could,” Mehserle said. “At that point, I made that decision, at that point to tase him.” […]
While Mehserle said he believed he was justified in using his Taser on Grant because he suspected Grant was reaching for a gun, deputy district attorney David Stein suggested even that decision was wrong. […]
Stein said Mehserle’s movements just before the shooting were not consistent with the movements an officer should make after deciding to use a Taser on a suspect who is lying on the ground.
Mehserle admitted he never yelled “gun” when he thought Grant was reaching for one as officers are taught to do if they see a weapon. Mehserle said he did not yell “gun” because he never saw one.
Stein also pointed out that Mehserle admitted he did not notice that Grant was being pinned down by then-BART police Officer Anthony Pirone even though officers are taught always to be aware of their surroundings.
“The only thing that went through my head was that I had to hurry up and tase,” Mehserle said.
Stein ended his questioning of Mehserle by asking the former officer why he had not told anyone — during his 10 minutes on Oakland’s Fruitvale BART station platform after the shooting or a friend who stayed with him for a week after the killing — that he had made a mistake.
It should also be noted that photographic evidence prior to the shooting demonstrated that Mehserle had looked down at his gun, as described by Prosecuting attorney David Stein in his opening statement:
Using video taken by bystanders to illustrate how the shooting occurred, Stein said Mehserle did not make a mistake. Stein pointed to the video showing Mehserle looking down at his holster before pulling out the gun.
“Was the defendant confused?” Stein asked. “Look where he’s looking? He’s looking at what he’s doing.”
Stein also noted that Mehserle wears his gun on his right side and his Taser on his left side. Mehserle would have had to reach across his body to grab his stun gun, Stein said.
Finally, it should be noted that Mehrsele had been portrayed by his attorney as a “non-aggressive” cop, which would seemingly open the door to evidence of Mehserle’s prior violent abuse of suspects to contradict those statements:
During his testimony, Mehserle cried repeatedly on the witness stand. Rains tried to portray Mehserle as a non-aggressive cop, different than Pirone. He said Mehserle was featured in his high school yearbook as “most huggable.”
Specifically here’s what Mehserle claimed occurred when he arrived on the scene.
He added he intercepted a few men who he said were approaching two fellow officers that had detained Grant and several friends against a concrete wall. He said the men, who turned out to be more of Grant’s friends, were taunting the BART officers.
“I just instructed them to get back,” Mehserle said.
He said he eventually looked at Grant and Jackie Bryson, who appeared to be upset. The other two officers, Tony Pirone and Marysol Domenici, had pulled their stun guns out, and given the situation, Mehserle said he decided to do the same. Before Grant was shot, he snapped a photo of Mehserle pointing his Taser stun gun in his direction.
Mehserle said he wasn’t sure what had transpired but tried to cool down Grant and Bryson.
“They were yelling ‘(expletive) that officer,’ ‘I’m going to sue,'” Mehserle recalled the two men saying of Pirone, who was described by some onlookers as the most aggressive and hostile toward Grant and his friends. The shooting, and the events leading up to it, were captured on video by several bystanders.
In short, Mehserle portrayed himself as a peace maker, the stable, calm voice of reason who tried to defuse the situation. Yet he pulled his taser on Grant twice (showing he knew where it was), and he never objected to the violent actions of his fellow officers.
Furthermore, he was the police officer who ultimately used the greatest force in the situation by shooting a man lying face down on the platform of the Fruitdale BART station while his partner, Pirone, the officer who had been escalating the situation, was kneeling on Grant’s neck and shoulder. Videos show Mehserle standing over Grant as he fires his weapon.
All this evidence which contradicts Mehserle’s testimony justifies admission of Mehserle’s abusive and violent prior bad acts as a police officer in my opinion. Under these circumstances evidence of Merserle’s violent abuse of previous suspects, including his beating of an African American male, would be justified to attack the credibility of Mehserle’s statements that his action to grab his gun rather than his taser was an accident and not intentional, that he thought Grant had a gun which justified the use of a taser, and that he didn’t notice that his fellow officer Pirone, who had been directing racial slurs at Grant prior to the shooting, had Grant pinned face down on the ground and under control.
After the verdict, the US Department of Justice has announced it will re-open with its own investigation into a violation of Mr. Grant’s civil rights by Mehserle.
On Friday, a Justice Department spokesman said that the civil rights division will review the case along with the U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco and the FBI.
The lumbering, 6-foot-5-inch and 250-pound Mehserle was led out of a Los Angeles County courtroom in handcuffs Thursday after having been convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the slaying of the 22-year-old Grant on an Oakland train platform last year.
Mehserle, who had been a relative rookie with just two years’ experience under his belt at the time of the shooting, is one of the first San Francisco Bay Area cops to be convicted of killing someone in the line of duty. He faces a sentence of between two and four years in state prison for the manslaughter conviction. He faces an additional three to 10 years for having used a gun in the commission of a crime.
This follows the precedent of the Rodney King incident where an all-white white state court jury found the white police officer not guilty of using excessive force in beating Mr King, an incident also captured on video. The biggest difference here is the King, unlike Grant was not killed. Whether the US attorney will try Mehserle on civil right violations for the shooting is unknown at this time.
However, much like the King case, the jury was predominately white, and there were no African Americans who served on the jury:
There were no African Americans on the jury that convicted Mehserle of involuntary manslaughter. Seven jurors identified themselves as white, three identified themselves as Latino and one identified herself as Asian. One juror declined to state a race or ethnicity.
Mehserle after the trial concluded but before the verdict issued the following apology:
“For now, and forever I will live, breathe, sleep and not sleep with the memory of Mr. Grant screaming ‘You shot me’ and me putting my hands on the bullet wound, thinking the pressure would help while I kept telling him ‘You’ll be okay,’ ” Mehserle wrote in the letter, dated Sunday. […]
“I don’t expect that I can ever convince some individuals how sorry I am for the death of Mr. Grant, but I would not feel right if I didn’t explain my thoughts as I wait for a decision by the jury …”
Mehserle didn’t apologize on the witness stand. But in his letter, the former officer said, “It saddens me knowing that my actions cost Mr. Grant his life, no words can express how truly sorry I am.”
He wrote that he wanted to talk with Grant’s mother, Wanda Johnson, and with Sophina Mesa, the mother of Grant’s young daughter, but that death threats directed at his family and friends “resulted in no communication occurring. I hope the day will come when anger will give way to a dialogue.
The Grant family has not accepted Mehserle’s apology nor so they consider it genuine.
Grant’s uncle and an attorney for his family said Friday they were unmoved by the apology. If Mehserle were genuinely sorry, they said, he should have said so long before now. […]
Cephus “Bobby” Johnson, Grant’s uncle, said that if Mehserle had written the letter the day after the killing and given it to the family, it would have carried more weight.
Now, he said, it amounts to “a convict pleading for mercy.”
“This is the first time we are hearing all of this,” Johnson said. “From the first, we had been condemned by [Mehserle’s] father who said that we were all trying to capitalize off his death. That told us that there was no sincerity in his heart or his son’s heart about what happened to Oscar. Here we were, being crucified for seeking justice. We hadn’t done anything wrong.”
Mr. Johnson, you did one thing wrong. Your family was born black in America. Imagine what the verdict might have been if Mehserle had shot a young white man, instead of a young black one. Imagine if most of the eyewitness witnesses for the prosecution had not been black but white and middle class. Imagine if the jury had paid more attention to the video evidence and less to the tears in Mehserle’s eyes. I doubt Mehserle would have received a conviction for the murder charge which calls for the least punishment — only 2-4 years in prison. What do you think?
One last video of the shooting:
Tell me you saw any justification for the use of a taser or a gun by Mehserle in that situation? I sure didn’t. I hope this case is re-tried by the US Attorney. It certainly is deserving of further review in light of the questionable decisions made by the Judge in the case and by the jury. I guess that watching a white police officer cry on the stand was sufficient in their eyes to convict him of the least damaging charge available, but I wonder what they would have done had his past history of abuse and violence toward blacks had been admitted in the record as it should have been in my opinion.
I also wonder if the presence of even one African American on the jury might have made a difference. Obviously the clear video evidence and the inconsistencies in the testimony of Officer Mehserle were not enough to believe their own eyes, rather than Mehserle’s lies.
Murder. Just plain murder. I guess we have to see a SCOTUS justice’s nephew murdered on tape before justice is done.
If a police officer is put on the stand to defend his or her actions, judges will always defer to their testimony, and juries usually do.
In King County (Seattle), where I live, inquests (with evidence and testimony under oath) are mandatory when a law enforcement officer uses lethal force. In over 100 such trials since the system was instituted in the ’80s, at least half of which involved unarmed victims, and a hugely disproportionate number non-white, the force has been found to be justified every single time. One hundred percent. And then usually the relevant officers’ union gives them an award.
It’s not much different anywhere else. I actually find it kind of remarkable that the BART officer was convicted of anything. I respect the difficulty of the situations police officers sometimes face, but cops can do almost anything with legal impunity in this country. It’s sickening.
It’s worse than what you think. A witness testified that when Mehserle got up off Grant’s back he said, “F*ck this” and drew his gun and shot Grant.
That night he told no one of his “I thought it was a taser” alibi but instead told his fellow officers that he thought Grant was reaching for a gun in the waistband in the small of his back, pretty damned unlikely since Mehserle had just been sitting on the small of Grant’s back moments earlier.
Four hours after the shooting he took an alcohol test. Because the transit system’s standard alcohol test form is used to test train operators after accidents the language on the form has a box that says “post-accident”. Mehserle, accompanied by his lawyer, refused to check the “post-accident” box. His lawyer wrote on the form “discharge of firearm”, and in case there was any doubt the lawyer then said it was intentional. Get it? Four hours after the shooting Mehserle was going with the “I thought he had a gun defense” and his lawyer said his client intentionally shot Grant.
Then the videos taken by the bystanders came out. (Originally the video from the platform camera was “lost”.) Mehserle then refused to cooperate with the investigation, quit BART to avoid being compelled to participate in the investigation, and got himself a new lawyer. Then came the “whoops, I thought it was a taser” story.
The trial judge ruled that anything the first lawyer said was privileged lawyer-client conversation and that without testimony as to what the lawyer said there was no foundation to what the form meant. So all of that wasn’t allowed into the trial. The jury never heard any of that. But if you read this you know.
Thanks, Bob, for bringing this out. The first thing Mehserle said after shooting Grant was “I thought he had a gun”, not “I meant to tase him”. There is simply no credible evidence that he mixed up his gun and taser.
Thank you, Steven, for bringing this story here. I was so hoping you would and you did an awesome job of summarizing the issues. For the life of me, I cannot understand why there wasn’t a single African-American on the jury. The trial was held in LA, not Orange County. I also am extremely upset that Grant’s prior criminal record was allowed as evidence. It was completely irrelevant to the case. I wasn’t aware that Mehserle’s past abusive actions weren’t allowed, which was relevant. That is simply outrageous.
I was hoping for a verdict of Voluntary Manslaughter. I think Mehsele lost his cool and with his boss screaming racial slurs, he acted in a moment of “passion”, the foundation for voluntary manslaughter. But, to be honest, I think that even a biased jury finding guilt is quite remarkable. It proves that Mehserle’s actions were way out of line.
I wanted to say something about Oakland’s reaction to the verdict. I live in Oakland, and I work on the same corner as the protest. The news reports indicated that there was a lot of looting and damage in the so-called “riots”. This is simply not true. There was great disappointment in the verdict, but the community worked very hard to ensure that a riot did not break out. Out of the 78 people arrested that night only 19 were from Oakland. That means, 75% came from out of town for the express purpose of creating chaos. There is a lot of frustration, but a lot of people are just happy Mehserle didn’t walk, like so many other cops do.
Finally, keep in mind that Mehserle will never be allowed into the general population of any prison. That would be a death sentence. So, however many years he gets (and I agree with Bob, it has to be at least 5), he will have to do them in solitary.
The way I see it, he had no reason to use the taser on him. That he used that as a defense is understandable because what else can he say? But it’s not a defense. Even if he did mean to tase him, the fact that he died and he had no reason to tase him should make it second degree murder. People die from getting tased all the time, and it should be considered murder any time the tasing was not justified.
Booman, didn’t I hear you are a lawyer? Just because someone dies as a result of another’s actions does not justify a charge of murder. You need specific intent for murder, and in the scenario you described there is no intent to kill.At worse it is manslaughter.
Yes, but I think tasers should be considered lethal weapons. If you tase someone with one and they die and you had no legitimate reason to tase them, then you had a reckless disregard for their life and didn’t care if they lived or died.
What I’m really saying is that tasers are weapons, not the alternative to weapons. So long as tasers are considered a legitimate form of crowd control then your interpretation of the law will be correct.
Anything is a lethal weapon if it kills. In the past boxers were convicted of using a lethal weapon if they hit somebody. If I sneak up behind somebody and whack them with a 2×4 so I can knock them out and steal their wallet, am I immune to murder charges if they die? I shouldn’t be, but the law is an ass — a reality that seems to grow more obvious by the day in this country lately.
In this case, however, the defense is so patently absurd that tasers are irrelevant. He thought the gun was a taser? Nobody believes that, not even the judge or jury. This is all about our creepy society’s kneejerk worship of cops and the military, and pretty much anybody else wearing a uniform. And that bully-love increases logarithmically to the quantity and volume of screaming about our “love of freedom”.
I guess the jury did believe it. Otherwise they would have found him guilty of second degree murder or the stronger manslaughter charge. If they didn’t care at all, they would have acquitted on everything.
I think they agreed that the cop went a little too far, but were not willing to say he did anything criminal. The taser nonsense gave them the cover they needed to choose the least draconian of the available charges. I mean, when a cop shoots a black guy there has to be a reason for it, right?
No! You will have then committed felony murder wherein someone dies as a direct result of your felonious behavior (armed robbery).
I can’t see that happening. Tasers are potentially lethal in the presence of certain medical conditions. The problem is that unlike guns, for example, they are not designed or intended to kill, the user cannot predict or control whether they will kill or only disable in a given situation, and in the overwhelming majority of instances they do not kill. Tear gas, and even pepper spray can also kill in some circumstances, but I can’t see them getting classified as lethal weapons.
We can’t even get so-called “rubber” bullets classified as lethal weapons, even though they have clearly been intentionally used to kill or maim in many documented cases. I doubt we will see tasers classified as such.
I am absolutely NOT defending tasers which, at the very least, are far too often used in situations that do not require them.
Under California law for murder intent (malice aforethought, etc.) can be inferred by the action. Premeditation can occur in the moment it takes to formulate the idea to shoot.
So, for example, if you see, say, a man standing over another man who is lying face down with his hands behind his back and the first man pulls out a gun and shoots that man then you can infer that there is intent.
In most murders the defendant never tells the court why he shot someone.
Suppose Mehserle wasn’t in a uniform, and after shooting Grant never said why he shot him. Could he not be put on trial for murder? Of course not.
Mehserle’s defense at trial was that it was an accident. However, his story the night of the shooting was that he thought Grant was going for a gun and that he shot him. When Mehserle realized that wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny (when the videos began appearing) he changed his alibi.
Grant was executed.
Steven D,
I do have one quibble here, in the greater scheme of things.
But first I think the cop should have been convicted of murder, & maybe in the second degree.
Secondly, How could they attack Mr. Grant`s character while the cops previous actions were not allowed to be heard.
Here`s my minor problem with your diary.
“Imagine if most of the eyewitness witnesses for the prosecution had not been black but white and middle class.”
I don`t like that statement one bit.
I think that percentage wise there are as many white middle class that are outraged as any other group.
Furthermore I expect to see more support from the white middle class as they realize they are as disposable to authority as any other class as they find themselves in the same situation as them, foreclosed on, unemployed & poor.
That should not be the criteria for judgement but I think you give less respect to the white middle class than they deserve. Me I`m just poor white trash, but with a conscience, as many white middle class people do.
To me, & by experience, police abuse knows no class or race distinction. That club or taser or bullet feels the same to everyone.
The problem is with the police, not with the people they abuse.
Thank you, & I also hope federal authorities look into this case.
“To me, & by experience, police abuse knows no class or race distinction.”
It is certain that many suffer at the hands of the police, and in all cases it is unacceptable. However, throughout history, the preferred target of police abuse in wildly disproportionate numbers is quite distinct and evident.
MLX,
Yes, I understand that, but it`s the fault of the police, not the class of the abused, nor of the class of the less abused.
That is basically my point. It`s the abuser.
I should also mention that I was severely discriminated against & abused not because of my skin color, but because of the language I spoke, by some who spoke another one & in the majority. The same can be said about religious discrimination.
It`s always the abuser who should be blamed.
I`ve never taken sides with them, ever, regardless of race, religion or ethnicity. I won`t tolerate anyone who does either.
Nice talking.
As a simple example, police punishment of Driving While Black is well documented by studies and journalists all over the country. Race/class-based “enforcement” is endemic in our society.
There’s no arguing if your point is that not all individual whites are racists or that we all accept outrages like the BART killing. OTOH, do you really believe that if the victim had been a middle-class white guy the outcome would have been the same, and if it was, that the general reaction would have been so invisible?
Meant reply for knucklehead.
DaveW,
Yes I do think the result would be the same, because the “Thin Blue Line”, which extends into the justice system, & prison system, always rules in favor of the abuser, (the cop).
We have a cop who murdered a young black man/middle class white guy. The thin blue line will rule. Ergo same result.
Don`t you think so?
If they start ruling too harshly on the protectors of authority, they would soon lose that protection, & we can`t have that now, can we.
I am not sure of the legal ruling for this, but it’s true that Grant’s prior legal problems (and he had some) were allowed into the trial even though Mehserle didn’t know about any of it when he shot Grant. And an incident where Mehserle sent an African American man to the hospital was also not allowed in. I don’t know why the judge made those rulings. Mehserle’s lawyer actually mentioned that his client had been voted “most huggable” in his high school class.
From my limited understanding of the law Mehserle should get at least five years in jail without probation because the gun crime is his first “3 Strikes” violation and because of California’s sentencing enhancement laws regarding the use of a gun in the commission of a crime. I believe the range is from five to fourteen years. If the judge tries to do anything less than five years then you know that the fix is in.
This judge’s rulings are as incredible as anything else in this case. The defense could bring in his high-school “huggableness”, but the prosecution couldn’t bring in his history of violence?
We all know CA is nuts, but when did it happen that the prosecution can’t decide what charges it wants to bring without interference from the judge? Is that a CA thing?
How did the jury get to be all-white? Seems like bias by the judge or ineptitude by the prosecution.
Unless this is just CA’s version of business as usual, this judge’s consistent efforts to derail the prosecution would seem to demand an investigation of his motives and his competence, if not his criminal malfeasance.
Yes, it’s a California thing. In Cal a person can be charged with “murder” which includes all the various murder and manslaughter crimes. After evidence is presented the judge can eliminate whatever charges he feels are not supported by the evidence. The defense can file a motion to have certain possible charges taken off the table. In this case Mehserle’s attorney filed a motion to take all the manslaughter charges off the table and only have second-degree murder as a possibility, rightly suspecting that the jury wouldn’t convict on murder but might settle on a manslaughter charge. The judge didn’t accept that.
It is possible to get an all-white jury by simply using the attorney’s right to dismiss without cause. Each attorney has a certain number of these. So, during jury selection, a large percentage are dismissed due to work, health, etc. Another large group would be dismissed if they have strong ties to law enforcement. Then it is simply a matter of having the defense (in this case) using it’s allotment of dismissals to chose all the remaining African-Americans from the jury pool.
There is some talk that African-Americans are less likely to show up for jury duty, but I have seen no clear statistics on that.
All that said, it is shocking that the prosecution couldn’t get a single African-American on the jury.
I was in a jury pool in Chicago recently. There had to be over 100 of us, probably half black and the rest white and other. Most of the final jury/alternates were African American. There would have been no way to get an all black or all white jury. I guess things work differently elsewhere.
So was I! The jury had one black man and two black women. It was a civil jury and both the plaintiff and defendant were white.
I agree, an all-white jury in Chicago would be unthinkable.
Remember that civil trials are not the same as criminal trials. In a criminal trial, race does play a factor…not so much in civil, though that point can be argued. But, this case had racial elements, so it was critical for the defense to get a jury without African-Americans. Having seen more of what this Judge did during the case, I now have to wonder if he didn’t dismiss African-American jurors with more frequency than others. It wouldn’t surprise me.
An all-white jury in the case of a white cop killing an African-American is unthinkable in Chicago.
Well, you would thinks so too in LA! Yet it happened.
Here is an interesting article on race and juries in Chicago:
http://www.chicagoreporter.com/index.php/c/Inside_Stories/d/The_Color_of_Justice_on_Cook_County_Juri
es
“Few people like Shipp get the chance to determine guilt or innocence at the criminal courthouse, where the Tolliver trial was held. Men from predominantly black areas of Cook County are less likely to be selected for juries at 26th and California than women, Latinos or men from white areas, shows an investigation by the Reporter.
“William Hooks, a criminal defense attorney and immediate past president of the Cook County Bar Association, said the findings highlight racial discrimination by prosecutors during jury selection at the criminal courthouse, where two-thirds of all defendants are black men. “I call it jury tampering,” Hooks said. “It also deprives a black defendant of their Sixth Amendment rights … the right to a jury of their peers.””
Sorry for the bad formatting.
Race has long been a powerful force in jury selection in every city in this nation.
I’ve been in a number of jury pools in Oakland, one of which was a murder trial. And yes, lots of Black people. But, my point is that it is possible to eliminate African-Americans. Take your jury pool of 100. 50 will be let go by the Judge for one reason or another, e.g., economic, illness, etc. Another 15 will be let go because of obvious bias. That leaves 35 people who can serve on the jury, of which they only need 15 (12 sitting and 3 alternates). Each lawyer has something like 10-12 automatic “I don’t like this person” dismissals. If an attorney is hell bent on not having an African-American juror, they simply use all of their dismissals to eliminate every one they can. Is it fair? Hell no. Is it racist? Hell yes. But it happens all the time. Remember, the Rodney King case was also tried with an all-White jury.
I’ve thought about this case a fair amount. I don’t know all the details so I will refrain from making a definitive statement, but I think these are salient points: